The present invention relates generally to ovens, and in particular, relates to an oven having a system for the automatic removal of grease from the heating chamber.
Conventional ovens include standard convection ovens, steamers, and combination oven/steamers, such as those commercially available under the trademark Combitherm® from Alto-Shaam®, Inc, located in Menomomee Falls, Wis. that utilize steam, heated air or a combination of both for steaming, baking, roasting, thawing, reheating, and various other cooking functions. The combination oven/steamer is compact and especially desirable in commercial kitchens that are traditionally limited in space. These ovens, steamers and combination ovens/steamers (collectively referred to herein as “ovens” for the purposes of clarity and convenience) can rely on both gas and electricity to supply heat, and are thus said to be available commercially as gas and electric devices.
Any of these conventional ovens may be used when preparing food product, such as poultry and the like that produce a significant amount of grease when cooked. Currently, commercial kitchens and the like that are used to prepare high volumes of poultry and other food products that produce a large volume of fat/grease when cooked (also referred to herein as “grease producing food product”) suffer from inefficiencies. For instance, grease that accumulates at the bottom of the cooking chamber must be periodically removed, which requires that the user periodically stop the cooking process and remove the grease droppings from the oven. The interruption in food preparation decreases the efficiency of food preparation efforts. Furthermore, if grease remains in the chamber, subsequent cleaning processes will be required with increasing frequency, as removal of all grease disposed within the cooking chamber is impractical and overly tedious. The chef must then also manually dispose of the grease droppings, which can be a messy and time consuming process. Additionally, ovens that accumulate a significant amount of grease are subject to a higher volume of routine maintenance operations.
What is therefore needed is a method and apparatus for the automatically removing and disposing of grease droppings from ovens in a more efficient manner than currently achieved by conventional ovens.